Mamita
A duty the protagonist of this novel has postponed for decades now weighs on him: telling the extraordinary story of his grandparents and mother, whose roots trace back to the early 20th century in the Peruvian Amazon. His grandfather, Otoniel Vela, was a prominent rubber trader who mingled with some of the most illustrious figures of his time—such as Gustave Eiffel and Jules Verne—while also taking part in a much darker chapter of history: the rubber boom Putumayo genocide, in which the prolonged enslavement and mistreatment of native populations led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples.
With his mother nearing ninety, he knows the time has come to settle that debt. And so, Mamita comes to life—a novel that intertwines two deeply personal threads: the memory of filial love and the very process of writing. Through city wanderings, jungle recollections, and literary reflections, the writer-son explores the nature of his family bonds, the social and racial tensions that shaped them, and the indelible mark of loss. At the same time, he wrestles with the challenges of storytelling, striving to capture what time so often renders irretrievable.
Gustavo Rodríguez delivers one of his most personal and introspective novels—a family memoir that is also an exploration of literary creation. A hall of mirrors where the fresh, witty, and confessional prose of one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Latin American literature shines brightly.
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SPANISH (World) | Alfaguara/PRH
Reviews
"Brilliant. ... Rodríguez manages, in a truly admirable state of grace, to tackle a theme that overused sentimentality has discredited to the point of expelling it from serious literature: family ties as the most important thing in our existence.” Caretas Perú
"In his previous novel, Rodríguez confronted death head-on, but in this one he takes a step closer still, to see its face—that of his own mother." La Razón
"The new novel by the Alfaguara Prize winner confronts collective oblivion, from the Amazonian genocide to familial abandonment. A work written against time, ignorance, and silence. ... In Mamita lies a foundational wound—a kind of original family sin that runs through the narrative and, once revealed, invites readers to confront their own hidden histories. But acceptance is not easy: the author acknowledges the difficulty of facing these family shadows and the burden that comes with it. ... Mamita is also a conscious farewell—a process in which writing becomes a way to face a loss he knows to be inevitable. It is to immortalize and to say goodbye. It is to reflect the complex relationship one has with their deepest bonds. To write about someone you love is, ultimately, to write about yourself." ABC
